zapatista
The Zapatista Army of National Liberation (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, EZLN), often referred to as the Zapatistas, is a revolutionary leftist political and militant group based in Chiapas, the southernmost state of Mexico.
Since 1994, the group has been in a declared war “against the Mexican state”, although this war has been primarily defensive, against military, paramilitary and corporate incursions into Chiapas. In recent years, it has focused on a strategy of civil resistance. The Zapatistas’ physical base is made up of mostly rural indigenous people but includes some supporters in urban areas and internationally.
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The Zapatista went public on January 1, 1994, the day when the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) came into effect. On that day, they issued their First Declaration from the Lacandon Jungle and their Revolutionary Laws. The declaration amounted to a declaration of war on the Mexican government, which they considered so out of touch with the will of the people as to make it illegitimate. The EZLN stressed that it opted for armed struggle due to the lack of results achieved through peaceful means of protest (such as sit-ins and marches).
Their initial goal was to instigate a revolution throughout Mexico, but as this did not happen, they used their uprising as a platform to call the world’s attention to their movement to protest the signing of NAFTA, which the EZLN believed would increase the gap between rich and poor people in Chiapas—a prediction that has been vindicated by subsequent developments.
first intro’d to them while reading – walk out walk on
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learning more from zapatista film (54:40) on thought maybe site:
http://thoughtmaybe.com/zapatista/
1994-5
what if we don’t want market economy.. what if we see more in being human
30 min – we are like a majority of mexico.. of the world..
31 min – managed by military – decision made by world trade organization.. enforced by u.s. military of an anti-democratic effort to control world economy, they want to turn mexico into a shopping mall
34 mi – zapatistas are very popular – so military tries to intimidate the ppulation so they will no longer support zapatistas
fear … via troops everywhere, illegal checkpoints.. homes burned because they weren’t loyal to rulers pri
dec 22 1977 – attack, 45 killed, 36 women and children
47 min – we have to start questioning the big picture
48 min – behind this – we are you… simple and ordinary people
50 min – zapatista is not an ideology. it is not a bought and paid for doctrine it is an intuition. something so open and flexible that truly it occurs in all places. zapatista poses the question – what is it that has excluded me? what is ti that has isolated me? and the response is different for mexican indians than it is from north american indians or the immigrants in europe ro the resistance movements in asia, or for black in africa. in each place the response is different. zapatista simply states the question and stipulates that the response is plural. that the response is inclusive and must be tolerant.
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from Rebecca Solnit‘s hope in the dark:
ch 7 – the millennium arrives: jan 1 1994
loc 995
they were nothing so simple as socialists, and they did not posit the old vision … they affirmed women’s full and equal rights, refusing to be the revolution that sacrifices or postpones one kind of justice for another…. they did not attempt to export their revolution but invited others to find their own local version of it…. for the rest of us, the zapatistas came as a surprise and as a demonstration that overnight the most marginal, overlooked place can become the center of the world.
what we need.. what we’re missing .. is that mindset.. for 7 bn.. all at once.. we need to leap.. to a nother way.. together.. or we’ll keep missing the sync of us.. dancing..
let’s see what happens.. when we all refuse to be the revolution that sacrifices/postpones one kind of justice for another.. a nother way.. let’s just see..
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be you. 